Volume 1

The plague of lust : being a history of venereal disease in classical antiquity ... / by Julius Rosenbaum ; translated from the 6th (unabridged) German edition by an Oxford M.A.

  • Georg August Wilhelm Julius Rosenbaum
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The plague of lust : being a history of venereal disease in classical antiquity ... / by Julius Rosenbaum ; translated from the 6th (unabridged) German edition by an Oxford M.A. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    on garden-walls, and so forth, afforded an inexhaus- tible mine for collecting amateurs, to whom we owe the Priapeia that have come down to the present day. Had they all been preserved to posterity, we should doubtless have had no need to bewail the lack of clear information as to the Venereal disease among the Ancients. Connected with the poems are the myths and legends of Antiquity. These however being difficult to understand when studied for their own sake owing to the confusion that still reigns in all the inter- pretations and discussions of them, hardly admit of being used for our purpose with advantage. Finally we have yet to mention the Fathers as authorities for the history of the Venereal disease, for their “Orationes contra Gentes” (Denunciations of the Geutiles) especially afford much valuable material towards a knowledge of the moral condition of the nations of Antiquity. True it is very likely these only too willingly allow exaggerations at the cost of Paganism, and attribute to an earlier time as already existing then, what really belongs to their own day. Still these drawbacks lose much of their importance in so far as the question for the present is only,—whether previously to the end of the X Vth. Century the Venereal Disease existed or no. The difficulties that arise in the systematic study and manipulation of all these authorities require no further discussion here, being sufficiently well known to every investigator of Antiquity—be he physician or layman. wooden of poets. — N.B. jicosus means at once like a jig-treeandafiicted with piles; perhaps we might render “most costive of poets”.) (Thou beholdest, whoe’er also in Martial, bk. XII. Epigr. 62. we read: Qui carbone rudi, putrique creta Scribit carmina, quae legunt cacantes. thou art, around the plaster of our walls lines teeming with not too chastened a wit.) (Who with rough charcoal or crumbly chalk writes verses that men read as they shit.)
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